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This Time, Pac-12 Expansion Could Be in Another Country

Larry Scott, the Pacific-12 Conference commissioner, flew to Beijing on Sunday to start an apparently unprecedented effort by a college sports league to establish itself in a foreign country.

Scott plans to spend four days there meeting with various officials to put together a “road map” for a way to expand the presence of Pac-12 universities in China. While Scott has his eyes on Central America, South America, India and other Asian nations in the long term, his immediate priority is establishing the Pac-12 in China.

Scott said in a telephone interview Saturday that he expected the Pac-12 to play games in China in the next three to five years, and that he hoped the league’s cable network would someday be available there.

There have been college football games played overseas, and dozens of colleges have sent teams in other sports on foreign tours, but the Pac-12’s initiative to become more involved in China is believed to be the first concentrated effort by a league to establish itself overseas. Pac-12 presidents and athletic directors say there is a strong desire for the results to transcend sports, hoping that an increased presence in China will lead to recruitment of future students and positive cultural experiences for their athletes who travel there.

“As the world shifts from a Eurocentric historical pattern to a more broad globalcentric pattern, the Pacific Basin and Pacific Rim are ever more important to who we are and where we’re going,” said Arizona State’s president, Michael Crow.

There are few specifics so far, but Scott said this fact-finding mission would eventually hatch an international plan.

Notre Dame and Stanford have discussed playing their 2013 football game in China instead of in California. Oregon, with its strong Nike ties through the company’s chairman, Phil Knight, also has a strong interest in China, a focal point for Nike.

The future of football in China is not as certain as that of other sports with more traditional ties to the country. Scott said he was optimistic that sports like men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball could be played in China soon because there is plenty of infrastructure to accommodate them. Scott said that the relationship would probably begin with off-season tours and lead to regular-season games.

Bob Bowlsby, Stanford’s athletic director, said: “It’s an emerging market educationally as well as athletically. It seems to me that international strategy is good for Stanford and the Pac-12 universities in general. All of them, especially along the West Coast, are heavily engaged in the Pacific Rim.”

Photo

Larry Scott, the Pacific-12's commissioner, is on a trip to China, where the conference plans to establish a presence.Credit
Earl Wilson/The New York Times

To help build a presence in China, Scott hired Carrie Xu, who recently received a master’s degree from Southern California in sports business and marketing. Xu, who has worked for Nike in China on its basketball initiatives there, is the Pac-12’s senior manager/international, and is believed to be the first conference official hired to focus on overseas development.

The Pac-12’s push into China came from Scott’s initial meetings with all the Pac-12 presidents. He said “the light went off” when he kept hearing about the wide international scope of various universities.

Crow said Arizona State drew more than 1,200 students from China and wanted to increase that to more than 2,500. The Southern California president, Max Nikias, said his university had more international students than any other in the United States (more than 8,600 of U.S.C.’s more than 37,000). U.S.C., he said, has more than 25,000 alumni in the Pacific Rim.

Washington Athletic Director Scott Woodward said: “This is going to be very important to us, not only for athletics but from a University of Washington viewpoint. This part of the world is an important part of our strategic plan of how we look at things.”

Scott said in the past 20 years, he had taken more than 20 trips to China while working in professional tennis, including establishing an office in Beijing while the chief executive of the WTA.

Drawing off many established contacts in China, Scott has four days of meetings scheduled with N.B.A. China, N.F.L. China, media companies, sponsors, event promoters, government leaders and officials from Pac-12 satellite branches.

“As we’ve tried to push the boundaries and redefine what our conference can do for our schools in the U.S.,” Scott said, “we’re pushing boundaries to try and value the university more broadly, including their international aspirations.”

Scott will also deliver a speech at the 2011 China International Sports Leadership Forum. Scott said that sports executives in China were intrigued by the America’s unique model of collegiate sports, and that there was a need for knowledge of organization and administration of sports leagues. The Chinese are intensely focused on the Olympics, Scott said, which blends well with a league that has athletes who have won more than 1,000 medals in its history. Scott said there could be a particular demand on the expertise of coaches and athletes in swimming, track and field, and volleyball.

“One of the things that resonated is the knowledge transfer and sharing of best practices,” Scott said. “It’s a cultural as well as sporting exchange.”

Scott emphasized, and Pac-12 officials widely agreed, that making money was not the primary goal for establishing a presence in China. Although there is long-term possibility for that and a sincere desire to eventually make the Pac-12 network available, Scott said he saw other leagues having a hard time following suit.

“I don’t know if this is a model for every conference,” he said. “It’s unique to us. I don’t know if there’s a playbook for others to follow, as this is the vision and ambition of our presidents because of our unique and different assets.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 12, 2011, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Pac-12 Still Thinks of Expanding, but This Time, It Has a Second Country in Mind. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe